


You are an example of better things to come

by MarauderCracker



Category: Glee
Genre: F/F, F/M, M/M, Multi, Non canon compliant, Other, santana pinning for brittany
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-17
Updated: 2014-08-17
Packaged: 2018-02-13 14:56:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,847
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2154777
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MarauderCracker/pseuds/MarauderCracker
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Scenes from life in NYC when Kurt, Santana and Rachel move together there.</p>
            </blockquote>





	You are an example of better things to come

When they first arrive to New York City, Kurt makes a list of the  _very important things they need to do right now_. They have to take a walk in Central Park and go to a real gay club and find people performing in the streets and, the most important thing: they  **must**  find a café that is cheap, comfortable, near their apartment, not too populated and has a friendly barista. Rachel doesn’t like coffee but neither likes being left alone in their too small and too dark apartment in a not too friendly area; so she tags along with Kurt and Santana. 

It takes them months to find the perfect café. It’s not as close as they would have wanted, but they three have to pass by that street when going or coming from classes and work; and the walk is worthy if you take into account that the café is already in a nicer zone. It’s called XOXO, and it’s small and full of college students and decorated in a strange mix of pop art and minimalism. They instantly appropriate two couches in a corner by the window, and Santana only takes a week before staying the night with one of the waitresses. 

Life in New York is good. Santana starts working as barista in a queer bar while she auditions for infinite things; Rachel is overwhelmed by the pressure of NYADA and doesn’t really have time to go to any audition; Kurt feels comfortable in Parsons and is slowly getting over the disappointment that NYADA meant.

Santana always orders a Caramel Latte, Kurt would never betray his NonFat moccha. Rachel gets green tea and scowls when her friends mock her. 

The quiet excitement, the warm happiness that is their life in New York, is soon shattered. Tight schedules and no free time and tiring jobs and an apartment too small for three people and struggling to keep their grades high so they don’t lose the scholarship; they can bear. Dealing with feelings and romance is a completely different thing. 

* * *

Jesse St James struts into XOXO like he owns the café. He adjusts his scarf, runs a hand through his hair and finally spots the person he’s looking for.

Kurt and Rachel are sitting in one of the two couches in the corner, with their feets on the table at the middle and all of their stuff thrown in the couch in front of them. Santana should be arriving by now, back from the audition she had today. When someone pushes their bagpacks aside and sits in front of them, they take a few seconds to look up from what they are doing (Rachel is studying a play and Kurt is sketching a design), just to annoy her.

When Rachel finally does look up, expecting Santana to be smirking back at her, her surprised gasp gets Kurt attention. He rises his gaze and is surprised to find Rachel’s ex staring at them with a dead-serious expression. “One of your classmates told me you would be here,” is Jesse’s greeting line. Rachel looks like she might pass out.

* * *

Some days they only see each other a couple hours. Kurt gets back from Uni, leaves his things at the apartment and goes to XOXO. Rachel arrives to the café an hour later, begging Kurt to help her practice her lines. Santana spends all day doing auditions and only stops to drink a coffee before having to run to the bar where she works seven days a week.

It’s time for dinner and they order coffee and apple pie, and the waitress (her name is Candy and she’s got a boyfriend but seems like sex with Santana can ruin anyone’s morals) jokes about how they’re never home. They don’t explain that their tiny apartment has no heating, the smallest bathroom of history and no couch. Rachel says that she’s in love with XOXO’s muffins, Santana winks at her and Kurt says that good coffee for such a low price is the best thing that ever happened to him. Besides, the only wifi they catch in their apartment has awful reception. 

Yes, life in NYC is expensive and sometimes hard and they miss their parents making dinner for them and the few responsibilities of adolescence. But they are happy and Santana says that they need one girl and two guys more to be like FRIENDS. And she thinks of Brittany when she says “one girl”, and Kurt thinks of Blaine as one of those two guys, and Rachel met Jesse again just a week ago but she never stopped loving him and it’s hard for her to say if she wants the third guy in the group to be Finn or Jesse.

And then Kurt’s dream of Blaine coming to New York next year and always ordering a medium drip with his nonfat moccha falls to pieces.

Today he brought his laptop with him because he knows that Rachel and Santana may take almost an hour before coming around. With a coffee by his side, his sketchbook on his lap and the computer on the table; he tries to doodle a few ideas, do the research for his essay about the different evolution of fashion in Europe and America, and Skype with Blaine.

He’s got his earphones on so Blaine can talk to him, while he types his messages. Well, mostly he just listens to Blaine’s rambling about school and Glee while he reads an article for his essay. “You are not listening to me,” Blaine says and Kurt changes the window from Chrome to Skype, feeling guilty. His boyfriend looks at him through the screen, frowning. “I was telling you that…” a hesitation, Kurt feels a lump in his throat, “my parents want me to go to UCLA, and I think…”

When Rachel and Santana arrive, Kurt is doodling tangled lines in the corners of his sketchbook, the entire page full of damp spots where the tears have fallen. “Blaine and I broke up.”

* * *

Most nights, after the bar closes, Santana stays a while later to help with the cleaning, count her tips and drink the remains in the bottles that are too close to empty to be saved for tomorrow.

There’s times someone’s waiting for her. A girl she met during the night, the cute waitress from the café, some woman she knos from one the auditions. She’s drunk enough to forget they’re not Brittany and enjoy a good lay and sleep until noon. She always wakes up hungover, tired and alone in someone else’s bed; goes back to her apartment to get a shower and a change of clothes; and starts a day full of annoying suybway trips and frustrating auditions.

But she never tells anyone. She doesn’t Skype with Brittany so often and she smirks at all the pretty girls and she keeps sleeping with Candance and she cries in the shower. 

Sometimes she goes back to their apartment after the bar, and she gets home just twenty minutes before Kurt and Rachel wake up to go to their morning classes. They never comment about how they can hear her, sobbing herself to sleep. Santana doesn’t like that other people remind her that she has feelings and heart that can be broken too.

One day, Rachel comments that “remember Harmony? The pretty lead singer from the Unitards? She got into NYADA, and she just broke up with her girlfriend.” Kurt predicts that this can only lead to more trouble.

* * *

Kurt has developed the habit of, when he’s alone at the café and he really doesn’t feel like doing anything else, looking for someone interesting and sketching them. XOXO is always full of young people talking and laughing, so Kurt never gets bored. Today he flops in the couch of the corner, exhausted and in an awful mood. He changes the playlist on his Ipod to something relaxing, gets his sketchbook and a pencil and looks around.

There’s a group of girls chatting against the principal counter, a couple in a corner, a large group of bohemian-looking students chatting in the middle table of the café. The one person that finally gets Kurt’s attention, though, is a guy sitting by himself in a table not so far. He’s tall and lean, with blond hair falling over his face and dressed all in expensive clothes. He’s staring down at his Iphone, unaware of Kurt’s careful study of his features. When Kurt thinks that he’s got him fairly remembered, he starts drawing.

He doesn’t look up again, he doesn’t plan on doing it until the drawing is finished. He’s trying to get better at drawing, because he likes to be the best and he’s most definitely not the best at Parsons. He barely notices when Candy finally spots him and gets him a moccha without having to ask and, by the time Sebastian Smythe enters the café, Kurt is so focused in the drawing he wouldn’t see it if Godzilla ran down the street.

Kurt doesn’t see Sebastian looking around, Sebastian spotting tall-lean-and-blonde, Sebastian sitting only two tables away from Kurt. Sebastian Smythe ordering a Schiumato and smirking at Candy while asking if she could add a little whiskey in it. Sebastian who looks around and then sees Kurt Hummel sitting in the couch at the corner, and stares -jaw hanging open and incredulous look- for fifteen seconds straight.

“Would you mind? I just saw an old friend,” he says, ignoring tall-lean-and-blonde and getting up. He walks towards Kurt, who’s got his earphones on and is huming a song as he starts with the shadows in tall-lean-and-blonde’s face. Kurt takes his gaze away from his drawing to get his coffee cup from the table and, from the corner of his eye, he sees someone standing right next to him. He drops his pencil when he sees Sebastian Smythe.

“You know, I knew you were a bit weird, but stalking and drawing strangers is a whole new level of weirdness.”

* * *

Santana walks down the street like she owns New York City. High heels, tight jeans and a red coat, her dark hair flying after her as she struts towards the café with a dangerous smile in her lips. 

She enters XOXO and walks directly towards their corner. Candy throws a wink her way, and Santana waves at her and mouths her something that could be “call me tonight.” She sees Kurt in the couch against the wall, talking to someone, and guesses that Rachel is already in the one that’s facing the other side. The top of a head with a black beanie is the only thing she can see.

Allowing herself to be a little childish, she jumps the back on the counch and lands on the other side, giggling. When she turns towards Rachel to announce that she has the biggest news, a different face welcomes her.

“What is this jerk doing here?” Santana exclaims, turning to Kurt. Sebastian Smythe grins and Kurt buries his face in his hands, muttering that he’s “surrounded by five years olds.” 


End file.
